lities of Madame Guion
awakened an enthusiastic interest in many of those whom her
remarkable religious experience brought into close relations with
her. Especially they produced in her confessor, Father Lacombe, such
a ruling admiration, reverence, and tenderness, that he was subdued
into a caricature of her. He followed her everywhere, could not dine
without her, made her directions his law. When her peculiar doctrines
of the Quietist life, and her fame, had caused a disturbance in the
Church, her enemies circulated scandals about the friends. The
spotless and heavenly-minded woman smiled, and paid no heed to the
wrong. But Father Lacombe, under the combined power of his Quietistic
fanaticism, poor health, bitter persecutions, and relentless
imprisonment, lost the balance of his mind altogether, and died.
Fenelon also, interested in Madame Guion by her genuine piety, and by
sympathy with many of her views, and finding this interest greatly
deepened on personal acquaintance, formed a strong attachment for
her. Convinced of her innocence, and knowing her rare worth, the
misfortunes and sufferings brought on her by her persecutors served
but to redouble his kindness. Her enemies then became his; and they
made him pay dearly for his fidelity, by robbing him of waiting
honors, and throwing him into disgrace at court.

His friendship for Madame Guion was like that of a guardian angel. It
never failed. One can imagine what her feelings towards him must have
been. Many noble women had a strong friendship for Fenelon. He could
not come into the confiding relations of his office with them without
that result. His face was all intelligence and all harmony; his
voice, music; his manner, fascination; his character, heaven. His
unconscious suavity, his abnegated personality, formed a mighty
magnet; and every soul, with any steel of nobleness in it, fondly
swayed to him. Madame Maintenon gave him, for years, all the
reverence and affection of which her commonplace nature was capable;
and then, at the command of her selfish bigotry, became chilled. The
impassioned and unhappy La Maisonfort, so talented and so beautiful,
whose pathetic story is charged with every element of romance, adored
him. And the Duchess de Chevreuse and the Duchess de Beauvilliers
always paid him an homage whose grace and sweetness the happiest man
that ever lived might well sigh for. To the latter of these queenly
women, then a sorrowing widow, he wrote, in t